by Jerry eBooks
“I want to see the manager.”
“I’m the manager,” said the young man, “and the druggist, and the clerk. In short, I own the place.”
Mr. Petten scowled and shuffled his thick, broad feet uncertainly. “I expected someone older.”
The young man rolled the cotton into a ball and tucked it neatly away in a trouser pocket. “My dear sir,” he said gently, “I studied for years under my father. Since his death I have discovered a good many things even he didn’t know. You have nothing to worry about. Absolutely nothing.” He grasped Mr. Petten by one arm and urged him through the swinging door. “We can talk more comfortably in here. Also, it’s absolutely private.”
The inner room was as crowded as the outer had been bare. The walls were tiered by narrow shelves, all of them lined with bottles, jars, and flasks. There was a large sink, the drainboards on either side of it littered with a variety of chemical equipment.
The dark young man brought out a second chair, dusted it lightly with the sleeve of his jacket, and pushed it into place. “I’m interested to know how you heard of me.”
Lowering himself, Mr. Petten waved a plump, vague hand. “Somebody told me. I’m not sure who it was. At a party, I think.”
“You don’t remember?”
“No. Does it make a difference?”
“I hardly think so,” said the young man, smiling a soft smile. “No, I hardly think so. Not in this case. Well, now.” He folded his hands on the table top and leaned over them. “If you’ll please tell me about your problem.”
MR. PETTEN’S eyebrows curled like furry caterpillars. “I’ll do no such damned thing. I came here to buy something. You’re here to sell it to me. I’ll buy it and leave. That’s the end of it.”
“Don’t be an ass,” the young man said calmly. “I’m a specialist. A specialist has to know the facts. Cases differ. A member of the family, for example, is quite a different problem from, say, a casual acquaintance. Even you should be able to see that.”
Mr. Petten reddened and puffed angry lips. “It’s both.”
“Two?” asked the young man. “Well! You have a tidy little project set for yourself, haven’t you?” He pulled at one earlobe, regarding Mr. Petten with interest. “Go on.”
“The rest of it’s none of your damned business.”
“If it wasn’t my business,” snapped the young man sharply, “you wouldn’t be here. If you won’t be reasonable, get out. I’ve work to do.”
Reopening the ledger, he picked up his pen and set to making entries in a careful, neat hand.
Mr. Petten fumed. He sucked his teeth. He blew out his cheeks. He tapped the tips of his fingers ominously on his paunchy middle. “All right,” he finally muttered. “Have it your way.”
“Eh?”
“I said have it your way. I’ll tell you. Only this makes you an accessory before the fact. Don’t forget that.”
The young man smiled a little and closed the ledger again. “I’ll take that chance.”
“Damned right you will,” said Mr. Petten. “Damned right. Now. The first one’s my wife. Marion. She’s twenty-seven. We’ve been married three years. I bought her and paid for her. That’s the way I do business. Put my money on the line and take delivery. All I expect is a fair return on my investment. Get what I mean?”
The young man murmured smiling agreement.
“Right,” said Mr. Petten. “Fair return. Only I’m not getting it. There’s another man.”
“Ah.”
“Get what I mean?”
“Perfectly.”
“I was thinking,” said Mr. Petten, “of poison. Something that couldn’t be traced.”
The young man put back his head and gave a short, hard laugh. “My dear sir,” he chuckled, “you’ve been reading these murder books. There’s no poison known that can’t be found by an expert analyst. Now in my father’s day . . .” He broke off to stare reminiscently at the ceiling, then shrugged his shoulders. “However, that’s neither here nor there. The fact is, the science of detection has advanced beyond all reasonable bounds. What used to be a simple problem in murder is no longer simple. Quite the contrary.”
“Um.” Mr. Petten gloomily regarded the floor.
“Don’t worry,” said the young man. “I’ll fix you up with something. Let me see. Does your wife—Marion, I think you said her name was—like any particular kind of food?”
“Food?”
“Yes. Like fish. Or mushrooms. Or—”
“Mushrooms,” said Mr. Petten. “She’s crazy about mushrooms.”
“Excellent”
“Eh?”
“I said that was excellent. Now then. The—er—gentleman in question? Is he also fond of mushrooms?”
“Him? He’s the one that got her started on them. Never used to have the blasted things. Now we have them all the time. Having them tonight.” Mr. Petten spat. “Never touch them myself.”
“Better and better.” The young man gave his hands a brisk, cheerful rubbing. “Tell me—does the gentleman come often to dinner?”
“He comes,” Mr. Petten said sourly, “every night. Every single, blasted night of the week.”
“And tonight you’re having mushrooms?”
“I said so, didn’t I?”
“Fine,” said the young man, rising from his chair. “Tonight, Mr. Petten, you eat mushrooms along with the rest of them. Don’t forget. That’s important.”
He went to the rear of the room, opened a cabinet and fumbled about inside. Coming back, he placed two small vials on the table in front of Mr. Petten. One was red, the other blue, and each contained a liquid of uncertain color. “The red one,” he explained, “contains muscarine. And some other things. Muscarine is a mushroom poison.”
Mr. Petten poked at the red vial with a suspicious forefinger. “How does it taste?”
“Very pleasant,” said the young man. “An old recipe of my father’s. And simple to use. You just pour it into the mushroom sauce. It does the rest.”
Mr. Petten’s face went suddenly pale. “But if I eat—”
The young man chuckled. “You’d better let me finish. Listen. If three people eat a meal, and two of them die while the third remains perfectly all right, the police are going to get suspicious. But if the third one gets sick, even though he doesn’t die, there’s no particular reason for suspicion. The point is, Mr. Petten, you get sick but you don’t die.” He indicated the blue vial. “That’s where the other stuff comes in.”
Mr. Petten prodded the blue vial. “What is it?”
“An antidote,” said the young man. “A really remarkable antidote. Different. You take it before you take the poison. At least six hours before. That way, no one can ever suspect you’ve taken it. By the time you eat the mushrooms, all traces of this will have vanished.” He pushed the two vials together and stepped back, beaming. “That,” he said, “will be five hundred dollars. For both of them.”
Mr. Petten reared up in his chair. “What!”
“Very moderate, I think,” the young man stated.
“It’s outrageous,” shouted Mr. Petten. “It’s highway robbery. “It’s—”
“Of course,” the young man said gently, “you could always use a gun. The only thing is, the police have such an embarrassing way with guns.”
“Look here.” Mr. Petten pounded the table with a fat, forceful hand. “I don’t believe in buying pigs in a poke. For all I know those damned things may be filled with common tap water.”
The soft, wise smile curled on the young man’s lips. “You could try one of them,” he suggested. “The red one, for example. I’m sure—”
“I’ll do no such thing,” Mr. Petten snapped. “Now you listen to me. I’m a business man. I’ll make you a business proposition. I’ll pay you a hundred dollars now. If the stuff works the way you say, I’ll pay you the remainder. You can trust me.”
The young man hesitated a long moment. Finally he nodded wearily. “All right. It’s a deal
.”
“Cash,” said Mr. Petten. He reached for a plump wallet, laid out five twenties, and picked up the two vials. “Fair and square. Cash.”
They walked together through the outer room. Mr. Petten went into the street. The young man stood in the doorway. Mr. Petten jerked a thumb at the gold-lettered sign. “Harith. That you?”
The young man shook his head. “He was the original owner,” he said. “He—uh—died. My father never would change the name. He always said that Harith kind of started him out in this business. In a way, that is. He was quite sentimental about it.” He giggled.
“Oh,” said Mr. Petten. “Well. See you again.”
The young man raised his hand. “Goodbye, my friend.”
Waddling down the street, Mr. Petten was quite pleased with himself. He blew a toneless tune through fat, pursed lips. The vials clinked pleasantly in his pocket. He was thinking he’d turned a nice piece of business. Two murders, and at fifty dollars a throw. “Afterwards,” he told himself, “he can whistle for the rest. But he won’t whistle loud. Not that one. Not when he’s an accessory before the fact.” He smiled grimly.
Back in his office, with the door securely locked, he uncorked the blue vial and poured its contents down his throat.
AFTER Mr. Petten left, the dark young man returned slowly to the rear room of his shop. He thought it unlikely that he would ever see Mr. Petten again, certainly not after he swallowed the contents of the vial—poison. He thought that very probably Mr. Petten wasn’t entirely honest, anyway. Even alive, he probably wouldn’t have have paid the remainder of his bill. Shaking his head, the dark young man bent again over the big ledger. A few minutes later he took an empty statement blank from the drawer of the table. In a neat, orderly hand he wrote:
For Services Rendered . . . . . . . . . . . . $500.00
He got out the telephone book, leafed through it, and carefully copied out the address.
Mrs. Marion Petten
1930 N. Lindenwald Rd
City
TRAP THE MAN DOWN
Harold Gluck
This traffic cop almost gets his homicide signals mixed up.
YESTERDAY my wife warned me in her most charming manner.
“Johnny Sanders, don’t you dare get a swelled head. The newspapers have been saying such wonderful things about you. All the women tell me how lucky I am to have you for a husband. But just the same, remember to see that your head fits your hat.”
Of course I still pinch myself to see if it is true. Up to last month I was a traffic cop attached to Squad B of the 25th Precinct; It seemed as though my life consisted of directing cars up and down the street, getting dizzy watching those traffic lights change, and warning the kids not to beat the cars. Now and then I helped an old lady make the other side of the street. As for summonses, they said I had the lowest average on the force. Any guy could talk me out of a ticket.
And now I am a full-fledged first-grade detective. Mind you, the police commissioner didn’t make me a second-grade detective or a third-grade one. He promoted me right to the top and there in front of all the city officials he said:
“When a cop uses his head the way Johnny Sanders did, he certainly deserves this promotion.”
And that made me feel good, especially the increase in pay. I don’t have to tell you about prices. The wife is going to have a baby, so the extra cash will come in handy.
Maybe you were busy at the time and didn’t read all the details in the papers about the Killing Blackmailer. So let me give you some of the high spots in the case. I got a clipping book that must be about five inches thick. If you have a night free, call me up and you can look through it.
Lou Rogers, the columnist, wrote in his nice breezy way that a new type of blackmailer was loose in the city. He would call up his victim on the phone and say, “Tomorrow I am going to kill So-and-so. If you don’t pay me what I ask, you will be next. Go to the cops and you’re a dead duck.”
That’s enough to send the creeps down your spine, especially if you pick up the paper the next day and find out the person was killed!
The commissioner called Rogers down to headquarters and for an hour he refused to talk. Then he opened up.
“Okay, commissioner, it may be my death warrant. But there is a killing maniac in this city. Either he is plain nuts or the most cold-blooded criminal this community has ever had as its guest. He asked me for ten thousand dollars. This was over the phone. Told me he would kill a man by the name of Ed Grayson on Main Street.
“I thought it was a gag. But the next day a hit-and-run driver killed Ed Grayson as he was crossing Main Street. I have twenty-four hours to pay the cash or be killed. And I have since learned from three people that they have paid cash to this blackmailer.”
SINCE I had the afternoon shift outside the office of the Daily Call, where Lou Rogers worked, I received orders to keep my eyes open.
“If necessary, you can leave your post,” said Captain O’Reilly to me. “I am keeping two detectives in the neighborhood.” Orders are orders, and my fat bald-headed boss insisted on discipline.
Well, about three o’clock in the afternoon it all happened. Lou Rogers crossed the street on his way home and said a forced, cheerful hello to me. You know the kind I mean, something between a short grunt and an absent-minded stare.
I watched him turn down Hudson Boulevard to take the short cut across the alley. Then I noticed a blind man, led by a seeing-eye dog and walking in back of the columnist.
The thought popped into my mind. “If Rogers goes through that alley, it would be a perfect setup for murder.”
I left my post, crossed the street, and nearly got bumped by a car, at that. I headed in the direction of the alley. Then I heard a terrible scream. I ran, and there near the side of the building, was the limp body of the columnist A knife with a wooden handle was stuck in his throat. He was as dead as could be.
At the other end of the alley, I could spot the blind man with the dog. I ran after him and caught up to him in a minute.
“Did you hear a man scream?” I asked. “Certainly,” he replied. “And in addition, I heard a man running in my direction.”
I looked up and down the street but couldn’t see anyone. It was necessary to take the blind man to the police station as a material witness. He protested mildly, but I told him it was his duty as a citizen to come with me.
THE next day I got a tongue-lashing from Captain O’Reilly. “You blockhead,” he shouted at me in his office, “do you want to make this department the laughing stock of the country? You pick up a blind man as the only witness to the killing. You should have been out looking for the killer himself. Instead, you bring us an honest respectable citizen. His name is Peter Simpson and he lives in a house by himself on Parkson Lane. He goes from office to office selling magazine subscriptions, with that dog guiding him. And you bring him in as a material witness!”
“But,” I protested, “he could have done the killing himself.”
“But,” snapped back my chief, “he can’t see, and I can’t see how much longer I am going to put up with your nonsense.”
I swallowed my pride and went into the outer office to apologize to the blind man. His blank stare, his black graying hair and buck teeth, sort of gave me the creeps.
“We all make mistakes,” he said, and then as a final sort of insult added, “I forgive you, son.”
He left the police station and crossed the street. Since I was on my way home, I went in his direction, walking slowly behind him. Boy, was I mad!
At Pine and Maple Streets he waited with his dog on the corner before crossing. A motorcycle cut in across a car. His dog started up, but I heard him say, “Down, Luster. Wait till the traffic is clear.” A few moments later he said, “Up, Luster, across we go.”
I followed them both across the street and then went home. I couldn’t eat much supper that night, and hit the hay about ten.
It was about three o’clock in the morning when I awoke
in a cold sweat. All night long something had been bothering me. I would toss to one side of the bed, then the other. Dogs, dogs, that was all I saw. But now I knew the answer! Peter Simpson wasn’t blind. He could see perfectly, and he must be the killer and blackmailer! It was so clear, after the truth came to me, I wondered how I could possibly have missed it earlier.
A real seeing-eye dog, you know, is trained to lead his master. He is so perfectly trained that if the master wants to do the wrong thing, the dog can be intelligently disobedient. In crossing a street, it is the dog who leads the blind man, not the man who leads the dog! When Simpson gave orders to his dog, that was the tip-off that he wasn’t blind and his dog wasn’t a seeing-eye dog.
MAD ABOUT MURDER
Scott O’Hara
Sure the doll was dead. But that didn’t mean Jack Forrester was going to pay for his clandestine crime.
AS SHE fell, she had reached out with her left hand and had grabbed the sleasy green mesh curtain. The bathroom was small. She lay on her back, her scuffed feet spread, almost under the sink. Her head was cocked at what he felt was a ridiculous angle, because the wall was in the way and she had doubtless struck it as she fell.
He stood in the doorway, his feet braced as though against the tipping of a world, and it was indeed his world which tipped and threatened to project him out into an unknown darkness.
The small bathroom had a fearsome clarity about it. Six inches from her right hand, the green plastic handle of a trick toothbrush with small tilted head gleamed against the cheap marble finish of the black linoleum. By some odd chance, the toothbrush had fallen parallel to the long line of her robed body and the head was slanted at the same abrupt angle as hers.
Small sounds intruded. The gurgle of the thin stream of water running down the sink drain, the metronome drip of the damp end of the shower curtain, a distant car squealing its way around too sharp a corner, a far-off and misty bellow of a tug in the harbor basin. Night sounds.
The room was hot and misty with the cooling steam of the shower she had taken, and thick with the scent of her, the personal fragrance running like a crimson thread through the headier fabric of perfume and creams and lotions. Mixed with other scents was the indefineable odor of death. Death was written in the blued contortion of face and the slit-tilt of eyes, feral, with dry glitter.